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The UK is one of the premier global hubs for the sharing economy and moves are afoot to make it the absolute centre.

The creation of a new trust mark, which will help consumers pick the right sharing-economy business to trust with their home, tools, even time, is a pivotal step in making this nascent sector truly mainstream.

Work begins on the new mark – or “trust seal” as it will be called – this week, which happens to coincide with Global Sharing Week. It was recently revealed that Europe’s sharing economy businesses generated €28bn (£21.6bn) in revenue last year alone.

How do you define what makes a sharing economy company trustworthy? Debbie Wosskow, chair of the Sharing Economy UK trade body and the author of the industry report that called for the trust seal, admits it is complex.

Working together: businesses must meet a criteria to ensure consumers trust themCredit:
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“This will include things like peer ratings, insurance and identity verification,” she says. The project is a joint venture between business, academia and sharing-economy expert Rachel Botsman.

A pilot programme, in which four volunteers from the sharing economy will try to find what helps consumers trust their brands, begins soon and the findings will provide the basis for the seal. The criteria must be “meaningful, independently verifiable and authentic,” Ms Wosskow says, but must also be inexpensive and applicable to businesses large and small.

Research shows that lack of trust is the biggest barrier to consumers’ trying out a sharing-economy service. The Sharing Economy Consumer Views Survey, conducted by Veridu, the online identity-verification firm, and The People Who Share, found that more than a third of people polled in the US and UK have never used a sharing-economy service because of concerns about personal safety and fears that their possessions will be damaged or lost.

The potential for the UK to lead the way in the sharing economy is very exciting

“Peer trust is of crucial importance to the success of sharing-economy platforms with participants actively researching the other party prior to engaging in a transaction,” said Rasmus Groth, chief executive of Veridu. “Recent media headlines have highlighted the scale of this problem and while the big established brands are in a position to weather the storm, a smaller, more recently established platform is likely to fail if building trust is not front and centre to their strategy.”

The UK’s trust seal will help the nation’s sharing-economy players overcome this barrier, and applications for the market will be accepted after September this year. This will not only be a boon for our homegrown players; insiders say that there is significant interest from overseas already.

“The potential for the UK to lead the way in the sharing economy is very exciting,” Ms Wosskow says. “Anything that helps to build consumer confidence will drive uptake and help entrepreneurs to scale.”

In the UK, the value of this market is rising steeply, following the introduction of new tax rules to allow ordinary people to make a little extra cash from renting out rooms in their homes through sites such as Airbnb. It has been estimated that 25pc of UK adults are already sharing their time, possessions or homes online, and forecasts value the market at £230bn per year by 2025.

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